The Leader's Lore

Someone, somewhere in your organisation, is telling a story right now. It may not be accurate. It is almost certainly becoming lore.

And it’s what they believe to be true about the organisation you lead.

Not the polished version that appears in strategy documents or carefully crafted presentations. These are the stories people quietly tell each other about what truly happened. The moments when things could have gone either way. The decisions that revealed something about the place's character. The episodes that, over time, become shorthand for what the organisation believes about itself.

Those stories accumulate slowly, almost unnoticed at first, until they begin to shape how people see their work and their place within it.

And at the centre of most of them sits the leader, not always comfortably, but inevitably the protagonist in the story people are trying to make sense of.

Leadership, after all, is rarely experienced as a set of strategies. It is experienced as a narrative unfolding in real time. Every decision becomes a scene, every difficult moment becomes a chapter, and every act of courage or hesitation quietly shapes the character that others believe they are following.

The story and how it unfolds matter more than many leaders realise.

People are not simply looking for direction. They are trying to understand the journey they have stepped into. They want to know where the path leads.

A small choice, a difficult conversation today, becomes a story tomorrow. A decision taken under pressure becomes something people repeat years later when they want to explain what kind of place this really is.

Those are the moments that eventually turn into lore.

When the story resonates, something subtle but powerful happens. The leader is no longer the only person carrying it.

The team begins to tell it themselves, adding their own chapters, retelling the moments that mattered, gradually turning lived experience into shared mythology.

That is when belief begins to spread, and with belief comes belonging.

Leaders must shape lore, create stories that matter, episodes that engage.

This is the work I keep returning to. I often find myself working at the edge of those stories. Helping leaders notice the narrative they are shaping and the landmarks that will matter later. Helping them stay true to the character they want to become as the journey unfolds.

Not by writing the story for them, but by helping them see the story that is gradually emerging beneath their feet. Because the strongest organisations are not built on strategy alone; they are built on stories that people believe are worth being part of.

And every great leader, whether they realise it or not, is slowly creating the lore that builds belief and belonging a story worth being part of.

Shape your lore. Tell it well.